How do you remodel a school cafeteria while still serving students five days a week?

That’s the question Marty Walters has had to face since work began on enlarging the cafeterias at Coronado and Monterey high schools.

“It’s been a challenge to do this while kids are in school and to keep serving,” said Walters, the manager for the Lubbock Independent School District’s $198 million bond, which voters approved in 2010.

The cafeteria expansions are a key part of the bond’s $25 million safety and security budget. The 2020 Committee that developed the priorities for the bond included transforming the 29,000-student district’s four high schools from “open campuses” that allowed students to leave for lunch to “closed campuses,” where the majority of students will stay on campus for lunch.

Mitch Watson, co-chairman of the 2020 Committee and president of investments for FirstBank & Trust, said the committee was focused on the safety issue.

“It was a big fear of every one of us, the volume of kids crossing the streets,” he said. “Those streets are so crowded. Our feeling was if you’re going to spend the money, let’s make the focus on safety.”

He said the committee discovered that relatively few high schools in Texas are open campuses.

“I remember when I went to Monterey, there was not the most responsible driving,” he said, “lots of wrecks, lots of absences.”

“Although we know a lot of students used that time very appropriately and safely, we felt that long-range this was the direction we wanted to go,” she said.

In order to require students to eat lunch on campus, the dining and food preparation facilities have to be available, which is where Walters comes in. Walters, who performed similar work for the Frenship Independent School District, was hired two years ago by the LISD to oversee the bond projects.

Estacado High School was built with the cafeteria capacity to serve all its students, Chief Administrative Officer Berhl Robertson Jr. said. But Monterey High School and Coronado High School needed major renovations to increase capacity, both of seating and for the kitchens.

Space to enlarge Coronado’s cafeteria was achieved by relocating four classrooms and several offices adjacent to the original cafeteria, Walters said. The classrooms were relocated to portables already on the campus.

“We’ll have capacity for three lunches at 800 per,” he said. “Our capacity is 2,400 kids.”

At Lubbock High School, the problem was more severe. The school’s existing cafeteria, opened in 1931, is the size of some at elementary schools.

The solution, Robertson said, was to buy and tear down an adjacent building to add a more than 30,000-square-foot cafeteria building.

“We tore down the old Calvary Baptist Church eight months ago to make room for the cafeteria addition,” he said. “It hadn’t been a church in 20 to 25 years and was owned by a plumbing company.”

That would have been a simple solution except Lubbock High is on the National Register of Historic Places, a list managed by the National Park Service of sites worthy of preservation.

“They were very easy to work with, but I think it was our design,” Walters said. “We’re trying to keep it as original as we can.”

Lubbock High is on the historic register because of its architectural details, which include archways adorned with Mexican tile and terra cotta trim.

“There’s a wave in the bricks,” Robertson said. “It was designed that way. We’re going to replicate it in the cafeteria building. It will have the terra cotta trim, the craftsmanship over the windows.”

Walters said a courtyard, similar to those scattered about the original campus, will be added off the cafeteria, which will have large windows identical in style to the original building.

“We just really didn’t want to lose this look,” he said.

“Our goal,” Robertson said, “is for when you drive 19th, you’ll think it was always here.”

The completion goal for the cafeteria projects is August in time for the fall semester, which is when all LISD campuses will become “closed.”

Walters said the new cafeterias will include round tables students already seem to prefer and amenities such as televisions.

“We want to give them a nice place to be,” he said.

“They all have been fairly complicated projects, especially Coronado and Monterey, where we are building within existing facilities,” Garza said. “I think (students and faculty) can start to see already what the schools are going to look like when it’s done.”

The cafeteria expansion is only one of the ongoing projects Walters is overseeing. At the start of the summer break, the stretch of Vicksburg Avenue adjacent to Coronado High will be closed and a new entrance lined by parking lots will be built.

“The school has never really had a front entrance you could find,” Walters said.

Heating and air-conditioning systems across the district, most of which are at least 25 years old, are getting replaced and 50-year-old restrooms at schools such as Hutchinson Middle School and O.L. Slaton Middle School are being gutted and entirely rebuilt.

“It’s something that really needed to be done,” Walters said. “After that many years, you can imagine what it looked like and smelled like.”

Robertson said when the bond projects are complete, the “effective age” of most of the campuses will go from 50 years to 20.

“It was just time for our district to put some money in facilities,” he said. “We want our kids to have good, functional educational facilities.”

Calling it “a game changer for our schools,” Garza said the district posts information on the bond expenditures and projects on its website, lubbockisd.org.

“Any member of the community who wants to meet with us, we’re open to that,” the superintendent said. “It’s the community’s money and we take that responsibility seriously.”

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The $198 million bond approved for the Lubbock Independent School District by voters in 2010 is divided into four broad categories: School & Academic Improvements, Arts & Athletics, Safety & Security and Technology.

The $106 million School & Academic Improvements budget includes building two new elementary schools — one to combine and replace the Iles and Wheatley campuses and one to combine and replace the Murfee and Haynes campuses. In addition, Alderson will be converted from a middle school to an elementary school, Centennial Elementary, Talkington School for Young Women Leaders and Lubbock High School will get expansions and two elementary schools, three middle schools and Coronado and Monterey high schools will get major renovations.

Below is the budget by school, which includes expenditures on Arts & Athletics, such as new playground equipment for every elementary school, Safety & Security, including video cameras, security lighting and perimeter fencing improvements and controlled access points, and Technology, which includes installation of interactive whiteboards, student and staff computers and wireless networking and electrical upgrades. Improvements also included renovations to restrooms and ramps to bring the campuses in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Details for each campus are available at the district website, www.lubbockisd.org. Click on “2010 Bond” in the left bar.

Elementary Schools

Alderson Elementary $1,254,833

Bayless Elementary $1,137,984

Bean Elementary $1,045,892

Bowie Elementary $677,168

Brown Elementary $1,025,762

Centennial Elementary $3,784,061

Dupre Elementary $1,184,172

Guadalupe Elementary $1,341,029

Hardwick Elementary $1,048,127

Harwell Elementary $1,077,417

Hodges Elementary $1,767,046

Honey Elementary $1,309,353

Iles/Wheatley Elementary $17,806,527

Jackson Elementary $1,027,666

Maedgen Elementary $1,171,820

McWhorter Elementary $1,527,990

Murfee/Haynes Elementary $17,806,527

Overton Elementary $1,073,447

Parsons Elementary $754,550

Ramirez Charter School $981,856

Roberts Elementary $776,338

Rush Elementary $1,010,814

Smith Elementary $1,050,949

Stewart Elementary $1,063,869

Waters Elementary $1,015,138

Wester Elementary $927,444

Wheelock Elementary $1,504,243

Whiteside Elementary $1,371,716

Williams Elementary $632,521

Wilson Elementary $1,077,894

Wolffarth Elementary $936,982

Wright Elementary $472,841

Middle Schools

Atkins Middle School $2,822,193

Cavazos Middle School $1,450,128

Dunbar College Preparatory $2,152,797

Evans Middle School $2,576,663

Hutchinson Middle School $4,869,847

Irons Middle School $2,771,721

Mackenzie Middle School $2,439,601

Slaton Middle School $4,903,858

Talkington School $4,333,046

Wilson Middle School $2,456,429

High Schools

Coronado High School $18,199,943

Estacado High School $6,343,035

Lubbock High School $21,332,307

Monterey High School $16,697,972

Note, these numbers will not add up to $198 million. There are non-campus specific expenditures not included.